The New Curia of Benedict XVI Looks toward Asia

The new prefect of “Propaganda Fide” comes from India. And the new secretary of the congregation for the liturgy is from Sri Lanka. His first public address was the presentation of a book. And it was revealing

ROMA, May 26, 2006 – On his first anniversary as pope, Benedict XVI asked God “to grant that I may be a gentle and firm Pastor.” He is already gentle and firm, to judge by his recent actions.

It’s enough to consider how on May 19 he imposed retirement from public life on one of the most powerful and untouchable men of the Church, Marcial Maciel Degollado, 86, founder of the Legionaries of Christ, venerated as a saint by his followers but accused of sexual abuse by dozens of former disciples. There was no canonical process, for reasons of age and health, but “attentive study and investigation” of the charges led to the invitation, which is in reality an obligation, to “a reserved life of prayer and penance.” But the findings did express gratitude for “the worthy apostolate” of the Legionaries of Christ, modern-day Jesuits with schools and universities all over the world for the education of the leading classes of society.

On Thursday, May 25, Benedict XVI flew to Poland for a four-day visit to the homeland of his predecessor, Karol Wojtyla. It was the first foreign trip that he planned as pope, since his earlier visit to Cologne last August was already on the agenda. He will make another trip in July, to Spain, and one to Bavaria in September. This is a sign that Europe is one of his strategic battlegrounds: this includes the fringe of Europe represented by Turkey, the destination of another trip at the end of November, with stops in Ankara, Ephesus, and Istanbul.

Pope Joseph Ratzinger is a convinced Europeanist, and he emphasized this before leaving for Poland.

Through his nuncio in Warsaw, he ordered the Polish bishops to put the brakes on Radio Maryja, the broadcasting body founded and directed by Redemptorist Fr. Tadeusz Rydzyk, which has found success in broadcasting programs against dechristianized Europe, foreigners, and Jews, with a large audience and wide agreement among Catholics and the governing right-wing parties.

In a meeting in Rome before his departure with Polish prime minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, Benedict XVI obtained his visitor’s agreement that he would also speak out against the anti-Jewish invectives of Radio Maryja: a necessary condition for the planned visit to Auschwitz of a pope, and a German pope, in the places of the Holocaust.

But the idea of Europe that Benedict XVI has in mind is very different from the one that has taken shape until now. Pope Karol Wojtyla had already denounced on a number of occasions the loss of the continent’s “Christian roots.”

Pope Ratzinger is even more severe: for him, Europe has come to the point of “hating itself.” And he sees, in the various nations of the continent, a weak and uncertain Church, incapable of responding to the challenge of the new naturalistic, scientific man without God who is emerging. Except in Italy.

For Benedict XVI, Italy is the example to point out to the other Churches and nations for a rebirth of Christian Europe. “It is the tangible witness of how a modern and secular state can still draw from the roots of its faith,” his vicar, cardinal Camillo Runi, has said.

To a Poland less Catholic than it once was, to a Spain pervaded by the secularist spirit of José Luis Zapatero, to a secularized Germany, Benedict XVI preaches an awakening of consciences based upon the “non-negotiable” principles of the sanctity of life beginning from conception; of the family composed of a father, mother, and children; of freedom of education: he emphasizes these principles constantly.

What this pope preaches is a natural decalogue, which is valid for men of all faiths. And in fact, he applies it to all: to Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and to the non-religious secularists of the West.

In the Vatican curia, he took away the autonomy of what was formerly the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, merging it into the Pontifical Council for Culture. He maintains that there is nothing to be negotiated among the revealed faiths, but that peaceful coexistence among the religions should proceed, instead, from a dialogue of culture and civilization.

For example, whenever he talks to Muslims, Benedict XVI places at the center the question of the person and his freedom. He does not refer to the Bible or the Qur’an, but to the message “conveyed to us unmistakably by the quiet but clear voice of conscience.”

The decapitation of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, with the sending of its former president, English archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, to Cairo as a nuncio, is not the only novelty introduced into the curia by Benedict XVI. With some other well-aimed moves, pope Ratzinger has already obtained much more.

The last one, which took place on May 20, was the replacement of the “red pope,” a slang term for the cardinal prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. This prefect, in effect, has enormous power concentrated in his position. He oversees more than a thousand dioceses in mission countries, which are found in Asia, Africa, Oceania, and part of Latin America. He designates the new bishops of these dioceses. He visits them. He helps them financially, with a large budget at his disposal.

Since 2001, the office holder had been cardinal Crescenzio Sepe, previously the head of the information office of the secretariat of state (he was the one who in 1984 appointed Mario Agnes as director of “L’Osservatore Romano,” and Joaquín Navarro-Valls as director of the Vatican press office) and then the manager of the great jubilee of 2000, for which he was rewarded by John Paul II with the cardinal’s purple and appointment as prefect of “Propaganda Fide.”

Sepe made no mystery of the fact that he was aiming even higher from there, at the office of secretary of state, which he prepared for with diplomatic tours that he organized himself and which were widely publicized in “L’Osservatore Romano.” He made a memorable visit to Cuba in March of 2003, embracing and praising Fidel Castro so excessively that the Cuban bishops felt the need to issue a declaration denouncing his actions.

Benedict XVI has destined Sepe for Naples, the major city of his region of origin, where he will replace cardinal Michele Giordano, who has retired for reasons of age. Naples is a prestigious archepiscopal see, but it does not compare to the worldwide theatre of action of “Propaganda Fide.”

As the new prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, the pope has called an Indian, cardinal Ivan Dias, 70, who has been archbishop of Bombay for ten years, but before that served at the secretariat of state and as a diplomat in many countries, including Albania (his last diplomatic post), and before that South Korea, Ghana, Indonesia, and Sweden, without counting the dozens of countries he followed as a Vatican observer, including Russia, China, Vietnam, and South Africa. He has learned many languages, speaking eighteen fluently having some familiarity with others.

But even though this skill is very much adapted to his role, it is not the only reason why Benedict XVI chose him as the new prefect of “Propaganda Fide.” Much more influential was the fact that cardinal Dias, who has an excellent understanding of the Eastern religions, has never surrendered to that “relativism” of faiths that Ratzinger condemned in 2000 with the most important of his actions as the cardinal custodian of doctrine, the declaration “Dominus Iesus.”

As archbishop of Bombay, Dias has on a number of occasions complained of the fact that the Jesuits, excessively enthusiastic supporters of interreligious dialogue, play the master in the seminaries of India. His goal was to evangelize and convert, and each year he administered many baptisms. Before the last conclave he was listed among the candidates for the papacy, but in reality he was one of Ratzinger’s most resolute supporters.

Dias is not the only Asian that Benedict XVI has called to an important curia post. Another is the new secretary of the congregation for the liturgy, Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith, from Sri Lanka: in his first public appearance – on April 27, see below – he came to the defense of the tradition orientation of the liturgical prayer of the clergy and faithful, and so also of the altar, to the East, against the practice that came in after the council of turning the altar to face the people. The new Vatican nuncio to Iraq, Francis Chullikat, is Indian. And China provides the most visible of the recently nominated cardinals, the combative bishop of Hong Kong, Joseph Zen Zekiun.

Apart from Europe, pope Ratzinger has clearly placed Asia at the center of his religious geopolitics.

This is just one more reason to call a new man as head of the secretariat of state, where Cardinal Angelo Sodano, who is far from sharing Ratzinger’s approach, is waiting to be dismissed at any moment.

The first public appearance of the secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, archbishop Albert Malcolm Ranjith Patabendige Don, who was called to this role by Benedict XVI, was the presentation of a book on Wednesday, April 27, at the Augustinian Institute of Rome, a few steps from St. Peter’s Square.

The book, first released in the United States in 2004 with the title “Turning towards the Lord. Orientation in Liturgical Prayer” – which was published this year in Italy – was written by Uwe Michael Lang, a German liturgist who lives in London and is a member of the congregation of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri.

But it also bears a preface written by Joseph Ratzinger when he was still a cardinal. As pope, he again met the author, Fr. Lang, in St. Peter’s Square at the end of the general audience the day before the presentation of the book, which he said he hoped would “have an effect.”

One gathers from the preface that Benedict XVI wants to encourage a rethinking of the orientation of the altar, the clergy, and the faithful during the celebration of the liturgy, in the light of the Church’s ancient tradition.

Pope Ratzinger does not intend to introduce sudden changes into the liturgy through the imposition of authority. But it is undeniable that his pontificate has inaugurated a more polished style of celebration, which is very visible in the pontifical liturgies over which he presides.

This is also what one gathers from the presentation of Fr. Lang’s book made by Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith in his capacity as secretary of the congregation for the liturgy.

Another test of the pope’s decisions on liturgical matters will come with the document that he will publish before the end of this year, as the capstone of the synod on the Eucharist held in Rome in October of 2005.

Here are Ranjith’s remarks on the orientation of liturgical prayer, which he gave in Italian on April 27:

Fr. Michael Lang’s book “Turning towards the Lord” – which is now being published in Italy – traces the Church’s reasons and practices, since the first centuries, relating to the direction of liturgical prayer.

The book’s objective and lucid approach will certainly make it a helpful tool for those who want to deepen their understanding on the subject. It demonstrates how the orientation of liturgical prayer as established by postconciliar reforms does not reflect the Council documents, a surprising fact.

The story was truncated as too long. The full story is here!

Well worth the extra click and read! Some quotes from Archbishop Ranjith about Fr. Lang's book below. Evidently, a must read.

"It is not by lowering the sense of the divine to the human level, but by seeking to raise ourselves to supernatural levels that we will succeed in making contact with the divine mystery."

"The liturgy is not what man decides it is, but what the Lord brings about within him: an attitude of adoration toward his Creator and Lord, liberating him from his slavery. If the liturgy loses its mystical and heavenly dimension, what will help man to free himself from the mud of egoism and slavery? If the Church does not insist upon the mystical and profoundly spiritual dimensions of life and the celebration of life, who will? Is this not our duty to a world that is closed off within itself, becoming disoriented, insecure, locked in its own prison? If man presumes to understand everything that the Lord does, then it is not God who judges history, but man himself. Is this not the ancient idolatry denounced by the prophets?"

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